by Dacre Stoker
The stairs ended at a large oak door that stood ajar, and a dark room beyond.
THE DIARY of THORNLEY STOKER
(RECORDED IN SHORTHAND AND TRANSCRIBED HEREWITH.)
17 August 1868, 6:19 p.m.—We dug about three feet down before we discovered the old wooden box.
An old box of teak approximately three feet long and one wide. At first I thought it was a child’s coffin, but as we unearthed the box, I quickly realized it was too small even for that.
A part of me believed we would find Emily buried within this grave. I pictured her sleeping soundly under this thick blanket of earth, waiting for the rise of night before she would somehow find her way past the smothering soil and tangled roots and busy maggots and worms to the land of the living. I then pictured her as she appeared that last moment before she bounded from our dining room out into the gloom, her eyes filled with fright, her lips so very red against her pale skin.
I cursed Bram and the others for putting these thoughts into my head, for making me believe my wife had somehow been transformed into a monster.
“Help me lift it out,” I heard Matilda say.
I forced thoughts of Emily from my mind and reached down into the hole. I had to lie on my side and stretch out in order to make purchase with the box, forcing my fingers under one corner and tugging. It was heavy, far heavier than it appeared.
The rain was falling steadily now, and the bottom of the hole began to fill with water. When I pulled at the box, it lifted away from the mud with a sickening smack. I worked my hand beneath it again and carefully raised the corner until Matilda could grip it and pull it from its hellish hole. Even with both hands, she could barely lift it, and I had to assist her.
I sat up in the tall weeds and looked down at myself. I was a mess. I was soaked to the bone, my clothing was caked with mud. Matilda fared no better, her long hair sticking to her face, cheeks covered in dirt and grime. Had anyone seen us, we surely would have been arrested for vagrancy, possibly even for grave robbing. Were that to happen, we would fit right in with the common criminals, the frightful way we both looked. But Matilda did not seem to care—I watched her brush her hair aside with her hand, leaving a muddy trail across her temple.
The box was nailed shut, and I had to employ the tip of the shovel’s blade to pry it open.
My heart stopped at what was inside.
The box was chockful of gold and silver coins, paper currency, faded documents . . . Matilda reached past all of it and plucked a stack of letters from the far corner, her face growing pale.
“What is it?”
“I wrote these letters to Ellen and left them in Patrick O’Cuiv’s grave in Clontarf. We buried them there.”
“How is that possible?” The earth around this grave had not been turned in years.
Rain pelted the paper in her hands, and the ink began to run. “Let’s get this inside the abbey,” I said, attempting to reaffix the lid.
Matilda stopped me and reached back inside. She pulled out what looked like a property deed. “This is for land in Austria; it’s in the name of Countess Dolingen.”
“Best to put it back inside,” I said. “It will be ruined out here.”
She finally nodded and returned the items, and I closed the lid. The two of us quickly carried the box towards the abbey.
With the rain the sky grew dark, churning black and thick with storm clouds blotting out the sun. Had I turned, I would have seen Ellen Crone rise up out of the pond behind us, with Maggie and Patrick O’Cuiv close behind. I would have seen them drift over the surface of the water towards us, towards the abbey, with sharp teeth gleaming white and eyes of red fire.
NOW
The snakes climb with unnatural speed, not as individual animals but working in unison, forming layers and weaving together in patterns that allowed the next group to climb just a little higher than the last. The hissing grows incessantly louder, topped only by the banging from behind the door, each hit sending more foul-scented muck through the air. Bram looks to the roses on the windowsill and watches in horror as they wilt and turn to black before his eyes.
The first two snakes appear directly in the room, and Bram hopes that is only because the creature behind the door somehow summoned them; he had hoped the roses would prevent the evil from entering from outside, a thin hope, but it was all he had. As the roses wilt and die, so do those hopes. He scoops up his journal and shoves it deep into his pocket, maybe it will be found on his body.
Back at the windows, Bram uses his bowie knife to cut back the vines, all he can reach. They are thick and coarse, but he saws through them one after the other. This slows the snakes, but only for an instant. They twist in and out of one another, forming their own path.
The first snake comes over the sill on the opposite end of the room, and Bram runs to it, stomping on its head with his thick boot the moment it strikes the ground. Another comes over the sill a moment later and springs out at him, appearing to fly through the air. Bram ducks aside and slices at it with the knife, watching as both halves hit the stone floor and somehow slither across to the other side. Two more come through the other window—Bram tries to get to them, but the moment they are on the floor they disappear into the shadows, one towards his bag, the other into the far corner. Three more come through the window behind him, and Bram moves just fast enough to dodge their bites, back to the other side of the room. He chances a glance out the window and spots more serpents than he can count, all on the verge of entering the room.
From the corner of his eye, he also spots Dracul. This dark man, this thing of evil, continuing to stare up at him from the ground, his black cloak fluttering around him as if it is alive, the air otherwise still. Standing beside him is his brother’s wife, Emily.
Half a dozen adders pour in from the window and land at his feet, their loud hiss drowning out all else.
THE JOURNAL of BRAM STOKER
17 August 1868, 6:19 p.m.—Vambéry was first into the room, but only after freeing his silver sword from his cane. He pushed through the door with speed I wouldn’t have thought possible, prepared to strike at whomever or whatever might be waiting on the other side. I followed quickly behind him, passing over the threshold with no weapon other than my wit. What I wouldn’t give for the Snider–Enfield Thornley carried!
The chamber was dark, devoid of life.
But it was the rank odor that hit us first.
It was a scent I had grown unnaturally familiar with—damp earth and death, mildew and rot.
Vambéry quickly covered his nose and mouth while pivoting about, ensuring we were alone. “It reeks of a tomb in here. This must be where she rests.”
Aside from a chair against the far wall next to a narrow window, the space was vacant.
“The tomb is not here,” I said, “it’s over there,” pointing to a thick oak door at the back of the room. My arm had begun to itch incessantly, and I felt the tug of Ellen all around me. I glanced at the ceiling, expecting her to be tucked up in the wooden rafters, but she was not there; the only life was the hundreds of tiny spiders clinging to the ghostly maze of webs adorning the ceiling.
Vambéry went to the door. “Are you sure? Is she in there now?”
I couldn’t tell, and I told him so. I felt her touch, her breath, the slow beat of her heart all around me, surrounding me. If I closed my eyes, it was as if she held me in her arms and pulled me to her chest in an embrace. A blackness swooned around me, and the room seemed to fade away until there was nothing but me and her.
“Bram!”
Hearing my name was like sustaining a swift kick to the chest, and my eyes snapped open. Vambéry was standing at the heavy oak door, glaring at me.
“Stay with me, Bram,” he implored. “Do not let her take control.”
Vambéry turned back to the door. The thick oak was sealed securely in place by a heavy iron lo
ck built directly into the center, with bolts branching out to both the left and the right into the frame, not unlike the one I remembered from the tower in Artane. He knelt down and peered into the large keyhole for a second, then dropped his leather satchel at his side and began rummaging through one of its pockets. From it he retrieved two thin blades and soon began tinkering with the lock.
A pain shot through me, and I fell to the floor, my knees cracking against the cold stone. Ellen’s presence squeezed me, and all at once I felt the heavy weight of fear. Fear for myself, fear for Vambéry, and fear for—
“Matilda and Thornley.” I had blurted out their names without realizing it, and Vambéry glanced up at me, then went back to work.
“What about them?” he mumbled, twisting one of the blades in the lock. The mechanism began to give.
I struggled to breathe, sucking in air.
It was then that Patrick O’Cuiv appeared in the doorway. He was larger than I remembered, an imposing presence that blocked any possible chance of exiting the room. His skin was as white as a blank sheet of paper, his eyes were glowing an unnatural shade of red.
I dove for the sword at Vambéry’s side, but before I could get my hand around the grip, Maggie O’Cuiv was in the room, her movements so fluid she appeared to float rather than run. She was but a blur as she crossed the space and kicked the blade away from me while lifting my body like a rag doll from the floor with her small child hands and pinning me against the stone wall, her feet somehow leaving the floor. I felt her icy breath at my neck.
I saw Ellen then. I saw Ellen Crone as she came in from the hallway, moving with the same ease Maggie had, moving so fast she didn’t seem to move at all. One moment she wasn’t there; then she was, her red eyes glaring at Vambéry.
“Away from that door!” she shrieked.
* * *
• • •
17 AUGUST 1868, 6:54 p.m.—Vambéry jumped aside; then Ellen was upon me, only inches from me, her burning red eyes fixed on me. I was brought back to my childhood, to the moment she dropped from the ceiling. I could not move, I could not breathe; I did not make a sound. When her fingers reached up and pressed against my temple, my world went black. The room around me faded away, and I was in another place, another time. Ellen’s mind opened to me, her thoughts, her memories, revealing the true fate of the Dearg-Due, revealing to me the true life of the woman before me.
* * *
• • •
I AWOKE FROM DEATH for a second time three years after my beloved pierced my heart with a dagger and buried me in a grave covered with stones and with a white rose placed atop in hopes of bringing some peace to my tormented soul. My tired eyes had fluttered open and peered into the gloom of what could only be the interior of a castle, a chamber so similar to the one my terrible husband locked me in a lifetime ago. I thought it had all been a dream, a horrid nightmare that had commenced when I was but a child, that perhaps my father, or even my beloved, would rescue me, but then I saw him, this tall man, bending over me in the dim light, suspending a rabbit by its leg over my mouth. Its neck had been sliced open, and blood flowed freely from the wound to my willing lips. I tasted every sweet drip; I felt its warmth racing through my muscles and tissue and limbs. It seemed to impart life in me as if it were something new.
“How can that be?” I heard myself say in a hoarse voice, a voice that had not uttered a word in a long, long time.
The man said nothing at first, still clasping the rabbit with one hand, his free hand squeezing the carcass to release every last drop of blood. When he did speak, I found his voice to be deep and rich, thick with an accent I could not quite place. “I have woken you from a deep sleep. I have brought you back to life.”
I tried to sit up, but I was so weak that simply lifting my hand to his face was quite the feat, but I did so nonetheless. I touched his cheek and felt a coldness not unlike my own, dead flesh that somehow was still living. “How long?” I forced myself to ask.
“How long have you slept, you mean?”
I nodded weakly.
“Three years have passed since you were sealed in that grave.”
At this revelation, I did sit up, the rabbit’s blood further awakening my limbs with each passing second. “Only three years? My beloved, then, he lives still?”
The dark man finished with the rabbit, licking at the wound in the poor creature’s neck before tossing it across the room. “If by ‘beloved’ you refer to the man who plunged a dagger into your unsuspecting heart and buried you behind his house, yes, he lives. I allowed him to live because I thought you would wish to kill him yourself for what he did.”
I shook my head violently at this assertion. “Kill him? I could never do such a thing. He is all I have ever loved.”
I realized now I lay in a large wooden box filled with the dirt of my earthly grave. I still wore the same white dress I had at last memory, which bore a hole in the fabric above my heart, now encrusted in stiff, dry blood. My fingers went to the spot and probed the flesh beneath. I found it perfectly mended; not even a scar remained. “He only wished for me to find peace in death.”
The dark man, now sitting in a chair beside my box, leaned forward and ran his hand through my hair. “Mortals cannot be expected to understand us, and you should pay them no mind. They are no more to us than that hapless hare,” he said, gesturing towards the corner where the carcass lay. “They are akin to flies buzzing about our heads, pests, perhaps sustenance, nothing more.”
“But he is my true love.”
The dark man smiled. “He is no more your true love than beefsteak is to a sailor returning from a year at sea.”
I tried to stand, tried to exit the box, but my legs were still wobbly. “I must go to him.”
“You will do no such thing.”
“Am I a prisoner here?”
To this query, the dark man responded not at all. He simply rose and went to the door, pausing but briefly to say, “Rest,” before leaving the chamber. I then heard the door’s heavy lock engage. And I was alone.
When I finally stood up and got out of the box, I quietly went to the window, taking careful steps, and looked out. I did not recognize the countryside. There were mountains and rolling hills, nothing of the Ireland I was familiar with. I turned my gaze to the stars above and saw that the constellations were all wrong. I understood then that he had taken me to a distant place—where, exactly, I knew not.
* * *
I SLEPT AFTER THAT—for how long, I could not be certain. When I awoke, I was again in my box, the soil of my homeland comforting to me, its texture and scent welcoming. A peasant girl was in the room with me. I tried to speak to her, but she found my tongue unfamiliar. She just sat there, smiling at me nervously and pointing to a fresh basin of water on the table in the corner. Next to it was a note—
Refresh yourself, then join me in the dining room when you are ready. The girl is for you.
—D
* * *
• • •
THERE WAS a large four-poster bed in my room and lying atop it was the most beautiful gown I ever laid eyes upon. The royal blue fabric was soft to the touch, with a dark lace trim woven throughout in an intricate pattern. Next to the gown was a necklace with sparkling diamonds encircling a sizable red ruby. I could not even begin to calculate the worth of such a necklace, for the stones it displayed were larger than any I had ever seen or even could imagine existed.
The peasant girl just then approached me from behind, and I felt her untying the laces of my white funeral dress, now brown, grimy with dirt and blood. It dropped to the floor and was pushed aside. She undertook the tedious task of washing me with a cloth from the basin. When I was finally cleansed, she assisted me into the blue gown. It fit perfectly. I wished I had a mirror, a habit I had yet to break, but there was none available, not that it would matter. She reached for the diamond-and-ruby nec
klace and secured it around my neck, then took a step back to admire her handiwork. A smile inched over her lips, and she bowed gently. I thanked her, fully aware she did not comprehend a word, then made for the door. She stopped me before I could leave and held up her wrist. There was a series of tiny bites evident along her forearm, marks I knew all too well.
At the thought of her blood, a need grew within me, an urgency. I had hoped this sick desire had passed after all the death I left in my wake, but it came over me stronger than ever as I looked down upon this poor girl’s wrist, at the throbbing vein just beneath the surface of her skin. I would not take her, though; as I longed for a taste of her life, I could not take her.
I shook my head and turned away, pressing my hand to the door.
She understood this, and a look that mixed offense with relief crossed her face. She opened the door and led me down a narrow hallway, through a small octagonal chamber with no window to speak of, and into a large dining room. The dark man sat at the far end. A plate sat in front of him, but it was covered with years’ worth of dust. I could not help but wonder if this room had ever seen any use.
“You are stunning,” he said, gesturing to the empty chair at the opposite end of the table. “Please be seated.”
I crossed the room and sat down.
He sniffed at the air, then said, “You did not drink of her? That is too bad. The blood of her family is amongst the purest of this land.”
“And where, exactly, is this land?” I asked, trying to prevent the hostility I felt from coloring my voice.
